


Covered

by TheSigyn



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-08
Updated: 2015-08-08
Packaged: 2018-04-13 13:34:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4523955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSigyn/pseuds/TheSigyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You can’t blame a girl, Spike. You’re all covered with her. I look at you... all I see is the slayer.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Covered

  
    It was now broad day, and Drusilla wasn’t back yet.

    Spike paced back and forth across the lair, anxious. It wasn’t large, their current lair, but it was luxurious. He’d made sure of it. The vacation cabana was a tropical paradise. Lovely bent wood, covered awnings, hanging curtains nailed down to keep out the sunlight while letting in the scent of the tropical breeze, hammocks with lace edging, the thick trees swaying, casting shadows on the curtains. They could hear the birds, catch the scent of growing things all around them. It was almost like living outside, like being wild things, with the freedom to live in the sunlight. Drusilla always wanted to pretend she was a wild thing. It wasn’t quite as vulnerable as it looked – he made sure he had a few bolt holes and escape routes. It made him a bit nervous, as it wasn’t the most secure lair he’d ever arranged for, but it was one of the most beautiful.

    Drusilla needed beauty right now.

    He wished he was afraid. It was sunny out there, and Dru might have gotten caught in it. She might be trapped in a slowly shrinking shadow, waiting for him to come rescue her. She might have been caught by an angry mob, like that one in Prague, or one of her victims might have had an angry father, or she could have been tracked by the authorities, or the slayer could have –

    But the slayer was thousands of miles away, and she wouldn’t have been real keen on hunting down Dru, anyway. That wasn’t Buffy’s style.

    He carefully put Buffy back out of his head, still wishing he was afraid for Drusilla. But he was pretty sure Dru wasn’t dying. This wasn’t the first time she’d done this in the last few months. Sometimes, he thought she was just delighting in torturing him with his fears.

    He reached, for the seventh time, for a cloak by the door to cover his vulnerable flesh, so he could go out into the scorching South American sunlight and search for Drusilla. And again, he pulled his hand back. He had no idea where Dru might be. He’d just wander about, jumping from frying pan to fire and back again, looking for Drusilla, and possibly getting himself dusted in the process. And then what would Dru do? She couldn’t take care of herself.

    Except, she could.

    Spike tossed himself back into one of the chair hammocks and fidgeted.

    Things weren’t the same. Not the way he’d wanted them to be. Drusilla had changed while he was injured. For the last hundred years Dru had relied on him, depended on him, left him to make their decisions, accepted his choices, leaving him to maintain their survival while she indulged her own pursuits – horrifically failed attempts at gardening, for instance, or oddly curated collections of dolls or toys, or some storybook legend she’d decided to try and make real to help bring about the destruction of the world. Acathla and the Judge had been two of her schemes that had come close to working. Calling in the Pied Piper of Hamelin and the three years she spent searching for Atlantis had not. She’d been planning on hunting up the Gem of Amara before they left Sunnydale – she was convinced it was hidden there somewhere. But it would have been a real trick managing a major excavation project with the slayer getting her perky little nose into everyth – Spike carefully put the slayer out of his mind again. But all of those legends and projects were games to Drusilla, or stories, or toys. The real world, that she’d always left to Spike.

    Not anymore.

    Once he’d been made helpless, and Drusilla had regained her original strength, _she_ had spent half a year taking care of _him_. It had changed her. Spike had thought all of her changes would fade again once he was hale and whole and they were out from under Angel’s domineering thumb. They hadn’t.

    She was cold to him. She’d always been distant, he was used to that. She always kept one foot in another reality, but he’d come to her, be enfolded in her long, thin arms, and he could feel the passion of her demonic heart. She’d been a charming and all but saintly creature before Angelus had brought her into darkness – much as Spike had, really, before Dru had enlightened him – and all that power to love had remained despite her madness and her evil. She was devoted to those she thought of as family.

    Unfortunately, that had also included Angel. And Spike had betrayed Angel. And now Dru was confused. The seductive passion in her that had kept Spike charged, kept him dedicated to her, had cooled. He still loved her. He thought she still loved him... but she’d gone so cool.

    The sound of a car outside made Spike start, and he jumped to a curtain to peer out. A gilly demon, scaly and reeking of old fish, leaped out the car and opened the passenger door. A smoking tarp darted past him, and the two demons fled up the stairs to the cabana, laughing. Spike opened the door to let Dru and her new... friend... in.

    Drusilla laughed and laughed as she shed her smoldering tarpaulin, twirling and falling into one of the hammocks hanging from the ceiling. “Oh, Spike, the ocean sparkles so!” she announced.

    “I know it,” Spike said. They were actually two hundred miles from the ocean. The gilly demon reeked of the river.

    The gilly demon guttered something which Spike didn’t really decipher. He knew a smattering of demon languages, but he didn’t care enough to try and find a pidgin communication with the creature. Communicating with beings outside your own kind only got you into trouble; no deals, no truces, no alliances like – he put the slayer out of his mind again. “Yes, thank you for getting her home.”

    The demon guttered something else, trying to push past Spike to join Dru on the hammock.

    “Yes, you’ve been a great help,” Spike said, gesturing him away.

    The demon gurgled and sputtered, struggling slightly, and Spike stopped being polite. “Get the hell out of my house!” He shouldered the demon back toward the door and pushed him out into the sunlight, burning his own hand as he did it. The pain felt good. It made sense. He slammed the cabana door, and watched Dru laugh as the gilly demon guttered loudly on the porch, and then slunk back to his car. “You’re late getting in,” Spike said.

    “We’ve been having a party,” Dru said. He half expected her to say something about _you should have been there_ , but she didn’t. She’d stopped inviting him places. “So much joy in the bubbles.”

    Spike didn’t argue. She reeked of fish, clear through her clothes to her flesh, and he didn’t argue. Her hair was tangled with river weed, and he didn’t argue. She’d invited that creature home, and he didn’t argue. “You should take a shower, love,” was all he said.

    “Water to water again,” Dru said. She rolled off the hammock and crawled, sensuously, toward the bathroom, undulating like a snake. She left her skirt behind. She’d been wearing nothing beneath it, and her skin was stained with mud.

    Spike wanted to be angry with her, to accuse her of carrying on with the demon, but it wasn’t the first time, and he couldn’t face the argument now. He clenched his teeth against the rage and picked up her skirt. There was a time he’d have gone in with her, washed her hair, made sure she remembered exactly what she was doing. Now he knew – she’d come out clean and competent without his help.     

    Her madness seemed to be fading. Or at least kept under control. Once she’d indulged in it, staring up at the stars in the ceiling in daylight, traveling to distant universes in her mind. He could see when she was about to fall into delusions, and usually he planned accordingly, tending her when she forgot to brush her hair or change her clothes, figuring out what was important and what she could just skip. Then she’d spend a day or a week or some months as a fairy princess, or a mushroom, or a dog, or a burning tree, and Spike would enjoy or endure her mad fantasy until she was herself again.

    But she hadn’t been able to indulge when he was sick. Those first few months really were hellish – when his severed spine had sent shooting pains through his back and arms, and his legs were completely dead. He’d spent a lot of time screaming, or unconscious, and Dru had to feed him, and keep him clean, and carry him about, and try – and usually fail – to find drugs to ease his pain. She hadn’t been able to escape into her fantasies.

    She’d made herself dismiss them to tend him, and he caught her doing it still. She was still, as always, distant and mercurial, but she rarely lost knowledge of where she was, what she was supposed to be doing. She’d start to fall into some delusion, shake her head, and then usually go hunting, giving herself something concrete to do. It was a wonderful coping mechanism, but... Spike was used to being how she coped with her... difficulties. Now that she didn’t seem to need him anymore, he felt... useless. He was supposed – he’d even been made – to take care of her. If she didn’t need taking care of... then what was he? What was the point of his demonic existence, if not to love and serve the dark goddess who had lifted him from weakness and obscurity to the height of power and wondrous violence?

    He shook his head and tossed the skirt in to be washed. Even if she didn’t need him to tend her, he could still love her. Everyone needed love. Even Angel, who claimed he hated it so, and who had Dru in his bed anytime he’d wanted, still longed for that cunning little bint. And the slayer had loved him – oh, it was so damned obvious – loved him like he didn’t deserve, like he wasn’t the selfish monster he’d always been. Spike hoped she’d killed him. He thought she must have – the world having not ended and all – and he didn’t like to think that they’d killed each other. No, she had to have killed Angel. It was the only thing that could make sense. That she was still out there, zipping along, leaping off the gravestones, stake in her hand, and that Angel was the dust he deserved to be. Angel didn’t deserve to have been the one who killed her, to have caught her powerful slayer’s body up, to scent her potent red blood, to feel the breath leave her, watch her jade eyes as they glazed over into perfect peace....

    Spike again tried to put the slayer out of his head, but it was harder this time, as the thought of Angel feasting on her had slipped into his mind. Spike himself had tasted slayer’s blood; he knew how potent it was. His mouth watered at the thought of it. The rush of her powerful heart, the strength leaving those deadly limbs, flowing through the wound into his mouth, down into his core, the blood, the hot slayer’s blood, gushing, pulsing, pouring into him, making him powerful, complete, a warrior among warriors, the slayer of slayers....

    He shook his head, because the slayer in his arms was not his memory of that sweet China doll he’d slaughtered, but a dream of feasting on Buffy, and he had to put that away. He knew it was silly. It was only that he’d never found a slayer before and left her alive, that was all. He’d hunted them down, and always expected the fight to be completely finished one way or another. Either he’d kill her, or she’d kill him, and that was how it was supposed to end. They weren’t supposed to be dancing around each other with a whole bloody planet between them, so far away, too far away, life and death no longer within their grasp....

     _Stop it!_ He actually scolded himself this time. He was just hungry. He hadn’t fed enough, that was all. He needed to hunt again, just as soon as the sun set, he’d take Dru...

    No. No, he probably wouldn’t take Dru. He and Dru didn’t go hunting together anymore. Not like they’d used to. They used to hunt together all the time. They’d target a couple, or a victim that looked like he had blood enough for two, and they’d pounce and feast in a duel orgy of bloodlust and joy. Often he’d set up a hunting ground that he knew was safe for her, and she wouldn’t leave it. Most of the time, she had left him to hunt for her, bring her lovely little girls to play with her dollies before she’d lap them up like sweet candy.

    Now Dru hunted alone. She’d go off, insisting she could find a meal for herself, and come back flushed through and sated, and he had no idea whom she’d fed off of. He suspected her tastes had changed. The scent on her clothes was often masculine, not childlike.

    His own tastes seemed to have vanished altogether. Usually, he liked what he called veal; mature, but young – in the sixteen to twenty-four range, hormones at the perfect balance, just stupid enough to wander off alone a lot. Preferably female, but he wasn’t a stickler about it. Girls just tended to be easier for him to seduce off into some corner. About the age a slayer – no. Didn’t matter. Nowadays he’d just grab someone, and feast. He felt like he was starving, but he couldn’t really satisfy the feeling, either, no matter how many victims he took, no matter who they were. He knew it had to be Drusilla. She kept pulling away, and starting fights, and half the time she wouldn’t even share his bed, saying his dreams hurt her. He didn’t even remember them most of the time! But she made it hard to satisfy his basic lust, and so his bloodlust had gotten a little carried away...

    She came out of the shower, completely naked, and Spike was so relieved to see her beautiful form he dropped all other thoughts and went to her, sensuously caressing her arms and shoulders from behind, pulling her dampness against him. He felt the warm water bleeding through his shirt, and he opened his mouth to kiss Dru’s throat....

    And she pulled away. “The birds are out,” Dru said. “They’re singing a final song.”

    “It’s late, love,” Spike said. “We should go to bed.”

    “My blood is aching,” she said quietly.

    He didn’t know what she meant.

    She slid across the cabana to their bed and slipped in under the covers from the foot, her head only appearing when she’d crept up the whole of the bed to snuggle into the pillow. Spike pulled down another curtain – both a light shield and a second line of defense – and went in to join her. He slipped off his clothes and curled under the covers beside her, pulling her cold and still slightly fish-smelling body against him. For long, precious moments, she let him kiss her flesh, her shoulders, her back, her throat, moving her hair aside to nuzzle her ear, run his nose along her jaw line. He started to feel more at peace, his love for her tingling back into his heart, all ready to fall into the lust that had always carried them through every dark and lonely moment in their dark and deadly unlives.

    And Dru shrugged him off. She didn’t even give a lame excuse this time. She just shrugged him off.

    Spike rolled onto his back and stared up at the ceiling. Dammit. Another day lying awake. Dru lay beside him, but she might as well have been as far away as that wretched slayer. He could have flipped her over and taken what he wanted, of course – he had in the past, just as she had done. But what he always really wanted was to be wanted, and forcing the issue of necessity made that impossible.

    Fine, then. If Dru didn’t like what he was thinking, it was her own damn fault. Stupid psychic bint.

    Spike rolled over and closed his eyes. And as always – to his chagrin – there she was. The slayer. He never said her name. He never brought her up. And still she was there, always right there behind his eyes. A memory, or a dream, or a fantasy. It was like being haunted. But with Dru so far away beside him, he indulged in her today. Her hair tight back, her perky little breasts, her long and supple throat... and he sank his teeth in. Sometimes he beat her, winning in an epic battle. Sometimes he tore her to pieces, listening to her bones crack. Today, he simply feasted. He dragged her down and down and down with his immortal kiss, killing her over and over and over again, until he felt almost sated. Her body hot against him, her hair soft on his skin, her heart beat thundering into him, her scent drowning him as he suckled on her. He’d feel wonderful for as long as the vision lasted. It would lull him into a torrid and confused sleep. In the evening as they woke he’d be hungry and dissatisfied, lonely for Drusilla, for logic, for a world that made sense. But for right now... there was the slayer....

    Oh, her blood would be so damned sweet....


End file.
